66 THE NF-WYORKER DIRECT DIAL I j j j 1 Use our weekly listing to dial directly to advertisers. Call from any phone to reach product and service representatives: Tony Bennett "Perfectly Frank" 24 Torch and Saloon Songs of Frank Sinatra. To order Tony's new album on CD or cassette call. 1-800-551-7200 Giorgio Beverly Hills, Inc. Free brochure and bonus gIft with purchase. 1-800-GIORGIO, Ext. 467 Hewlett-Packard DeskJet Portable Printer PrInt sharp black and white text any- where you go with this lightweight and compact printer. For product information: 1-800-.552-8500 Inter-Continental Hotels London EnJoy elegance and uncommon value at our four London hotels. 1-800-327-0200 L'Ambiance A vtew of the Gulf, the golf course and Sarasota Bay. All behind the gates of the Longboat Key Club. 1-813-383-4646 Ext. 3300 The New School For a free New School Bulletin providing information on more than 1,500 adult education courses - and B.A. and .Jl.A. degree programs, call: 1-800-544-1978, Ext. 46 Passport Newsletter@ Publishing hard-to-find information and recommendations about the world's best travel destinations since 1965. For a free issue: 1-800-542-6670 ADVERTISEMENT THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 28, 1992/ JANUARY 4. 1993 11. .. . /)Ij '\ unrelenting negativity was a positive as- sertion of "values." As in the real wars to come, Bush sustained himself by oppos- ing an enemy. The brutal campaigning that got him elected, however, hardly resolved the problem at the heart of his political character. The sine CUlVe of Bush's Presidency was nearly as predictable as geometry, if his campaign behavior is taken as the axiom. The public wanted to continue and extend the prosperIty of the Reagan era while tempering its excesses. Bush was elected, in effect, with Michael Dukakis's mandate: competence, not ideology. Bush's identity as an old- money Yankee implicitly carried a promise of change: he wasn't the new-money Californian. (At the Republican Convenrion in New Orleans, Nancy Reagan, seated in the V.I.P. section, acidly re- marked, upon hearing the acceptance speech, "Kinder and gentler than whom?") Bush straddled a polarity: the desire for federal action and the demand for conselVative consistency. Thus he dra- matized the hollowness of his early Presidency. A staged purchase of crack in Lafayette Park highlighted the war on drugs-Bush's first war. A staged visit to a Maryland elementary school showcased him as the education Presi- dent. (His touted education summit with national leaders, at the University of Virginia, in 1989, produced a modest set of goals only because of the pressure exerted by the summit's co-chairman, Governor Bill Clinton, of Arkansas. In tortured meetings over the next year, Bush's policy aides systematically frus- trated Clinton's in their jointly assigned task of creating a practical program.) And by posing against the backdrop of the Pacific, Bush became the environ- mental President. His photo opportunities were unlike Reagan's, which were the scrim for ideological imperatives. When the pro- jections of an idealized Bush ceased, nothing remained A high Bush Ad- ministration official who worked inti- mately with the President from the beginning said recently, 'Where was the guiding concept? There was none. " .. fI , --- .", It's been a problem for the whole Bush Presidency. There hasn't been a stable concept that aligns with a stable President. The process of holding it together was self-destructive." Reagan had the conviction that "government is the problem," but turning that convic- tion into policy required a dynamic executive to introduce radical change. Bush carried on by means of inertia, the volunteers of the Points of Light Foun- dation, and, at various junctures, the Marines. In his first year, Bush expected to spend his entire term as a Cold War President. He commissioned his national-security apparatus to conduct " . ." a strategIc revIew, which, after five months of Presidential stasis, produced an approach his National Security Council spokesmen re- ferred to with pride as " 1 " L status quo pus. ater, criticized by no less a personage than Ronald Reagan for missing the opportunity presented by Mikhail Gorbachev, Bush began to jerk him- self onto a different course. Still, George Mitchell, the Senate Majority Leader, accused Bush of "timidity"-the old wimp charge, which always rankled. In the 1988 campaign, Bush had sent James Baker to negotiate with News- week's editors over the use of the word "wimp." Now Baker waved poll num- bers at Mitchell: 'When the President of the United States is rocking along with a seventy-per-cent approval rating on his handling of foreign policy, if I were the leader of the opposition, I might have something similar to say." The crumbling of Communism in East- ern Europe drove Bush's poll numbers even higher. But in Panama, at the cru- cial moment, he hesitated to support a coup attempt against Manuel Noriega, who survived to taunt him. Senator Lloyd Bentsen, who had been Dukakis's running mate, charged that Bush had let Noriega "out on furlough" (a clever and mean reference to Bush's clever and mean use of Willie Horton in the cam- paign). On December 20, 1989, Bush ordered an invasion He was a President in charge, who could incarcerate evil. Many commentaries in the press hailed